I am Sophie, a Swedish woman by birth but English by adoption. I have a little mud hotel in the beautiful and ancient West African town of Djenne, Mali. WWW.HOTELDJENNEDJENNO.COM Because of unstable political
situation, tourism has ground to a halt. Hotel still open! But hotel staff mainly working in Bogolan studio now: www.malimali.org check out our fab online shop!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

It rained again two days ago, although the rainy season should be over around the middle of September. It was a big rain- the forecourt of the hotel turned into a swimming pool. I stayed in my room to start with, thinking that since my staff seems to have been coping without me for two months, in the height of the rainy season, they should be able to cope now. After a while, since there was no remission in the downpour, I decided to take a look. I found all the staff huddled under the rood of the veranda, while poor old Boubakar was the only one working at the pump, which could not cope with all the water. 'ANKATA! SISAN SISAN!' (Let's get on with it! And now!)I barked and rolled up my trouser legs. 'Get yourself a bucket! Everyone works if you want there to be a hotel left here! I think it was the fact that I had come back that somehow had paralysed them. They were waiting for me to give the sign to start. Probably in my absense they just got on with it? We worked for about two hours in the pouring rain and afterwards. The next day everyone worked too, including la patronne, trying to put the muddy mess of the forecourt back into order again, carrying buckets with sand and shoring up the collapsing barricades behind the hotel. The guides' and drivers' dormitory buildings are beginning to sink and the doors no longer close.